


Dare to Defy

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magic, Minor Violence, Reincarnation, badass merlin, stages of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2019-08-23 04:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16611644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: Arthur keeps coming back incomplete, with old magic pulling his strings. Merlin will rip the world apart to get him back.





	Dare to Defy

           Merlin, for all the magic in the world at his disposal, never saw this coming. It's fair, he thinks, as he's not a god. Simply a boy, or rather a man now, with a little extra energy in his veins.

           Still, he posits, he should have seen this coming. 

           Arthur, ever the soldier, ever the leader, looms over Merlin, gun pointed between his eyes. Blood leaks from Merlin's nose, and he can't see through his right eye. Even so, he lifts a hand, the faintest gold crackling behind the blue of his open iris. 

Arthur sneers. Faintly, Merlin can make out traces of the boyish prat he was centuries and lifetimes ago, and his hand wavers, gold flaring and flickering into icy blue. 

           "Can't do it, can you? Still trapped in the idea that I'm some faded king from dusty legends?" The voice is all wrong, cold and a raspy, tinged with the smoke this Arthur is so fond of inhaling. Merlin goes to lean up, and the entirety of his right arm, shoulder to wrist screams at him. He collapses on his back with a groan, tears dripping into his ears. 

           Above him, Arthur sinks to a knee and traces the contours of the wizard's cheek with the cold gun. Merlin shivers and Arthur grins. "When it's warm, you won't even be able to appreciate it."

           Merlin had expected grief from Arthur, when he finally returned. Had been prepared to deal with the stages as one walloping mess. He’d truly believed that he would know Arthur as  _ his  _ Arthur, when the blond returned as a man struggling with all the stages at once, dealing with everything that had occurred and the great kingdom left to legend and dust and ruin. Instead he got bits and fragments, an Arthur who always seemed to be missing a piece of himself, made up of a hole in his very essence that slowly sucked the breath from every version after Camelot’s King.

            He thinks about how each reincarnation seems to have one they sink into harder than the rest. His mistake, Merlin decides, was assuming that grief and her stages happened linearly. He'd been there for denial, and when bargaining had happened, he'd assumed anger wasn't going to show. Now, he's wondering if Arthur's original acceptance disrupted the order. 

           "Why?" It’s wet and broken and if he could, Merlin would wince at the choking sound that is his own voice.

           Arthur sits on the bruise that once was Merlin's waist and grins, though there's nothing friendly in the glare of teeth. "I told you from the beginning, Merlin. I was in this for the thrill of it." Merlin swallows as Arthur's face looms over his, as a hand rough with callouses- from guns instead of swords- traces the splits on his cheeks, his lips. Gentle, like the caress of denial, distracted like depression. Warm fingers pause over the cut still dripping on Merlin's cheek, fingers exploring like a small child's in the crack on an old stone table.

           "Surprised you haven't used your magic to fix this."

            Merlin can't respond and Arthur sighs, sitting back, lazily rolling his own hips into Merlin's crotch.  _ Bargaining,  _ he thinks,  _ he's mimicking bargaining's seduction.  _ And stars above if it didn't hurt, Merlin worries it might be enough to excite him. 

           Above him, Arthur grows bored. He sets the gun down and lies next to Merlin, taking one of the sorcerer's ice-cold hands in his own, rough fingers playing with long and needle-like bones. 

           "You keep hoping I'll remember. Don't you? Some magic gimmick to 'wake up' memories of your kingly lover. Only, I've read the legends, Merlin. You and I? We were never lovers. Barely friends, I'd say. Though, I'll give credence to those who disagree. I mean, subtext and all. But those lies of us together? Thought you'd get me huh?" He grins and turns his head towards Merlin. The fluorescent lights of Merlin's loft crown Arthur's head in a broken halo. He releases Merlin's hand and traces plump and bruised lips again. "Sad really. Coulda been lovers in this lifetime if you weren't so caught up in destiny and fate. Always trying to do the right thing. So busy saving everyone, but you can't even save yourself." Merlin coughs from deep in his chest when he tries to find the words to remind Arthur that lovers came after friends, that the legends where only there for the first relationship, but Arthur slings an arm across his chest and Merlin sees spots. 

           Wide eyed and a little manically, Arthur hops up, slinging his hands around the room. Broken dishes, cracked drywall, bits of cloth that might have once been an apron, Merlin thinks, all of them nothing more than dusty reminders of a night gone horribly awry. 

"God, Merlin. Did you even think to ask about my childhood? This one, obviously since you seem so well versed in all the others. Ask about parents? Siblings? Best friends?" Arthur, dressed in a red sweater and rich, blue jeans, slings his fist into the drywall. Merlin watches as it gives a cloud of paint flakes and debris raining down, settling into the broken crevices of his body. He can't feel the pain he should, too busy wondering if Arthur is even aware of what his color scheme implies, of the history behind that particular shade of red. 

           "Dead, none, and traitors, by the way." Merlin can't keep track any more, and he closes his eyes; Thinks he'd like to curl on his side, but he can't move his right shoulder. A hand slaps his face, and he's not sure if the blood is from a new wound or an old one, but it chokes him all the same, and fuck all if choking on blood and saliva isn’t becoming a recurring problem. 

           "Do you know what happens, when one of the world's most elusive beings keeps tabs on your life? Strange, nonexistent agencies also keep tabs on you. And they don't send invasive Christmas dragon plushies or weird Latin birthday poems. No, they send grown agents and scientist to 'train' you. Lots of fun, my fifteenth. Learned all about Knights of the Round Table, proper gun technique, and what happens when you aren't careful with explosives." Arthur brushes a hand over his side, unaware, but Merlin knows the taste of the marbled flesh there. He just didn't know the history behind it. 

_             "Chemistry accident. Wasn't paying much attention in class."  _ He'd never once questioned the careless explanation. He had never once thought he would have a reason to question the dismissive tones Arthur used to explain away all of his scars. He wants to explain though, “wa’n’meh.”

           Arthur isn’t listening though. He’s wandering around the remains of Merlin’s flat, fingers tracing the spider web cracks on a thin marble statue that were caused when Arthur first went on this rampage and slammed Merlin into it. He scratches his fingers across the enamel of Merlin’s fridge, a radiant sunbeam yellow left over from the 50’s, and mutters to himself.

           Merlin grits his teeth and forces his broken body up, pulses of magic and pain hitting him like waves, causing his stomach to lurch and the world to wobble just a bit. “Ertha. Wan’ me, th’ giffes.” Merlin had kept tabs on Arthur, once upon a time. But after the disaster of wartime Arthur, after the depressed incarnation walked off into a blaze of canon fire and never came back, Merlin had decided he couldn’t do it anymore.

           “Di’ nah send you thin,” the words are watery and weak, and Merlin cannot imagine them actually reaching Arthur, but the blond turns towards him, lips pursed and head cocked to the side the same way he did in Camelot. It’s a different kind of pain that makes his eyes water this time, and Merlin can’t decide it it’s worse than his dying body or more desirable. He settles for hauling himself against the remnants of a once really comfortable lazy-boy in a particularly hideous shade of mauve-purple-brown and sighs, then attempts to clear his throat. “Uh tul yu in th’ lib’ry. Never seen you ‘fore.”

           Arthur’s face goes purple. He shakes his head. “Liar. Liar then, liar now! My whole life was spent getting your gifts.” There’s the faintest quiver in his voice though.

           Merlin doesn’t answer. He finds he can’t align his thoughts in any kind of order, to make sense of everything happening. Heaven above, but he can’t even figure out what set Arthur off.

           Before, with the others, when Merlin had finally found them they’d already been a living embodiment of personality traits. Denial, unable to accept  _ anything  _ to the point where Merlin had begun to wonder himself if the whole world was a crazy hallucination. Never mind the fact that they were in the fucking water near Italy because,  _ “Merlin, how do we know that the river is actually moving, or that the grass is actually solid? Suppose you think ghost are real too…” _

__ Bargaining, always wanting to negotiate everything, down to the type of bread.  _ Despite the fact that _ they’d fucking agreed on the same damn bread! Merlin gives a wet chuckle at the memory of a renaissance Arthur arguing loaves of bread at a festival once, based on nothing more than the difference in length.

           Depression had been the worst. Merlin had waited so long for him to come back, had begun to accept that he wasn’t coming again, when somewhere in the trenches of a backwater town, he’d stumbled over Private Pend. Literally stumbled, as the blond hadn’t stood back up after ducking for cover. Merlin had never quite convinced himself it was  _ his _ Arthur, but he’d rather enjoyed getting to know the morose bastard. He’d never considered the Private’s  **contemplation** of death as anything more than the fear of a soldier who faced it every day. Months they’d spent, huddled together in trenches, Merlin doing his damnedest to protect Arthur from his need to rush into the thick of things, without anyone realizing that Arthur couldn’t possibly have survived. One day, Arthur had given him a small, sad huff of a breath, then without any protective gear, without even a weapon, strolled into the middle of the fray, like he was wandering the aisles of a market. Merlin hadn’t even realized what Arthur was doing, until a gentle hand guided him to a cloth covered body a few days later.

           Present day Arthur has taken to dragging his fingers across the spines of Merlin’s books, fierce scowl on his face. He picks one up, flicks through the brown leather binding, and something like recognition stutters across his face. “Impossible.”

           It’s muttered, and Merlin watches as Arthur grips the book tightly, bending the spine and sending a few loose pages fluttering. He breaths heavily, nostrils flaring, before he slings it as hard as he can across the room. “How do you have that book? You sent it to me, on my seventh birthday. It’s not even in a real language!”

           Merlin is confused, and he doesn’t think it’s entirely related to the head injuries he’s sustained. He shakes his head, and the room swings back and forth long after he thinks he quits. “Can’t. Onl’ one.”

           Arthur is on him in a flash, coarse fingers wrapping around Merlin’s throat. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

           Merlin chokes, sees spots, but he manages to lift his left hand to Arthur’s wrist. He tries to speak, but Arthur’s fingers tighten and for a moment Merlin’s world fades away. He comes back when a warm had skids across his cheek. It doesn’t even hurt anymore which makes Merlin bark out a soggy laugh.

           Arthur doesn’t see any humor in the situation, and he proves it by dragging Merlin to his knees and slinging him into the wall. One booted foot catches Merlin in the spine and he feels more than hears the sickening crack.

           For the first time since Arthur originally slung a glass at his head, Merlin feels rage brewing beneath the fear and worry. This isn’t his fault. Arthur had been gone for well over one hundred years when Merlin showed up in that library and saw him pouring over stories of knights.

           A little spark of magic drips in his throat, thick as honey but bitter with hurt, and he rolls his eyes towards a red faced blond. “Fuckin’ told you already, prat. I didn’t send you anything.”

           Arthur sneers and he slings himself forward slamming his arms into the wall above Merlin’s curled form. “Stop bloody lying to me!”

           Merlin manages to slump himself against the wall, so his head is supported as he glares up at Arthur, anger drives his magic through his bones. The magic moves slowly and uncomfortably, but Merlin thinks maybe it’ll be to his advantage, if he can stall anymore beatings from Arthur. “You approached  _ me _ in that library.”

Arthur pauses for a moment, like he honestly doesn’t remember. Merlin manages to right himself a little more, though his back screams and tears run down his cheeks in bloody, dusty trails. “Wanted you to leave me alone, but you were insistent. Said you felt drawn to me. Couldn’t explain it.” His head lolls a little as his eyes drift shut. “Didn’t want to know you again. Always leaving me behind, you are.”

           Arthur lifts a fist, and Merlin readies himself for the blow, but the blond steps back, rapping his knuckles along his leg.

_            Dinner.  _ Merlin suddenly remembers what they were doing when Arthur snapped. Nice little take-a-way noodle dinner with slightly sour grape juice because Merlin hadn’t been shipping recently and Arthur didn’t feel like actually going out.

           “Didn’t want to talk about yourself, did you,” warmth seeps through his torso equal parts soothing and nauseating. “Quit asking after a while, always made you snippy if I asked.” Merlin furrows his brows. So anger had been there, just subdued.

           Arthur snarls and leans down into his face, squatting over Merlin’s legs. Merlin can only hope that Arthur can’t feel the heat as magic, syrup-slow, drags through them. He waits, but the red-faced male doesn’t say anything, breath huffing across spit-slick lips into Merlin’s face. It goes to show the magic hasn’t fixed his brain yet, because his response is a barely concealed smirk as he remembers the taste of those lips. The silence wakes something up in Merlin, and he struggles to his knees, knocking Arthur back. He wants-  _ so many things. _

           Instead he grips the stupid red sweater in his left fist, as his right arm is still ruined. “You keep leaving. I didn’t want you waltzing back into my life. I stopped looking. You left, walked away and got yourself killed over and over and I was done.”

           He’s not sure when, but his right arm has fixed itself and now he’s got two fist in Arthur’s sweater. He manages to haul them both to their feet, and musters up the strength to shove Arthur back. Magic that had long been dormant, lazily keeping Merlin alive, but rarely doing more, suddenly burst across his skin in a strange fizzing. Arthur manages to break free, and lunges for the gun, but Merlin lifts a hand and blast it into the bedroom. Arthur turns, eyes wide, and struggles to stay upright in the sudden whirlwind Merlin is conjuring.

           “At first, I didn’t even think it was you. Thought I’d finally gone raving. You, in a library? Never seen it before!” Merlin can’t remember if that’s strictly true or not, but he moves past it. “And then you were so bloody insistent on being in my life. Made me furious, the way you kept popping up, nosing your way into my life. ‘Course, I reasoned if I was mad, wasn’t any reason not enjoy the fantasy. I’d earned it. Over three thousand years. Watched you die four times. And you were so willing to love me, even with all of the walls you keep up.  Only, if it was a fantasy, it was a sucky one. Do you know how hard it is, to stare at a face older than the city we live in, and how hard it is to not ask if you remember? If some small part of you knows who you once were.”

           He almost can’t hear himself over the roar he’s conjured, but he doesn’t care anymore. So many emotions he’s kept buried so deep are suddenly bursting forth, in great waves that pulse, echoed in the chaotic magic around him. He sinks to his knees, snot and tear streaking down his face. “You can’t be real this time. I called you forth the other times. Not Camelot, but after. Screamed to the sky and the gods and the lake. Begged the wind and the stars and every worthless beast with breath. Felt you each time too, a strange little blip in the world, calling to me. But not this time. I never wanted you back. Not again.”

           Arthur stalks towards him, but Merlin can sense no violence, even as he sneers. “Think you’re so powerful huh? The might sorcerer with the power to control life and death. Think you alone can challenge the natural order of things.”

           The voice isn’t wholly Arthur anymore, but rather a strange echoing, ancient and infantile. Merlin puts a hand on his head, watches as Arthur fades for half a second, and wonders if maybe his head is still a little bruised. “You keep calling him back, a piece at a time. But it wasn’t time. We know when he’s needed, Merlin. And you kept defying us. Arthur knew too. Knew he wasn’t meant to be around. Couldn’t help but want to rest a little longer.”

           Merlin’s eyes flare and he thrust a shaking arm out not even wincing as he throws Arthur into through the walls of the sitting room. “A game? You’ve been playing a game with me all this time.” Anger hums in his veins and he thinks he can hear it sing in the air. He brings Arthur back, furious at the smug look on the prat’s face. He gears himself up to sling him through another portion of the wall when Arthur speaks, this time his voice his own.

           “Careful Merlin. Might not be in full control, but it is still my body you’re slinging around.”

           That stops Merlin. He drops his hands, and papers, books, furniture, and chunks of wall slam to the ground. Arthur saunters forward, gentle hand cupping Merlin’s cheek. “Finally healed that, did you?” He pats it twice and leans in like he might kiss Merlin. “Careful there love, it’d suck if you killed me this time. Might be the one lifetime I do remember.”

           It’s said so off-hand, so relaxed, that it breaks Merlin. He drops to his knees, head bowed. A part of him wants to keep raging, to fight the creature in front of him that is Arthur and is not Arthur. Some of him wants to scream, to weep the way he never did before, and let the grief over take him until he’s nothing. He also wants to beg this creature to tell him what to do, to finally,  _ finally _ , bring Arthur back. A complete, whole, utterly daft but still regal, Arthur back into his life. He wants to forget that he’s been around to see the entire world change, a hundred times over and that he’s seen entire populations die out and knew civilizations spring to life.

           He can’t though. Because for all that the man before him isn’t the king of Camelot, and for all that he lets his emotions run him, the man is still Arthur. Some version of Arthur however fractured and incomplete it may be. He sits on his heels, and breaths deeply, trying to collect himself.

           “Give him to me.”

           Arthur stops the fingers trailing over the bridge of Merlin’s nose. “Beg your pardon?” The voice echoes once more, an angry rumbling Merlin feels in his chest.

           Merlin lifts his head, blue eyes glowing. “Give him back. Now. All of him. Every damaged and boorish bit you’ve kept locked in that tower.”

           Arthur’s nostrils flare, and through it’s his voice, Merlin can hear the layers beneath it. “Who do you think you are, boy, to demand from us this way?”

           Merlin lefts himself off his knees. He doesn’t need his arms raised to conduct the wind this time. “I am no longer the foolish, village boy bowing to every wise, old being simply because they’ve been around. Too long I let dragons and prophecies dictate my choices. Too long I feared all I could be. Even in the end, I trusted.”

           Arthur lunges at him and the strength behind the punch that cracks Merlin’s nose seems to come from the deepest parts of the earth. Blood drips into his mouth, but Merlin barely notices. “You say I’ve defied you? You have seen nothing yet.”

           Arthur sneers, “You are nothing. I dare you. Try and defy powers you don’t understand.”

           Merlin grins, wicked and bloody, and his eyes flicker between a brilliant gold and stormy blue, and at certain points Arthur imagines there are colors without names swirling in Merlin’s eyes. “You’ve slept for thousands of years. I may have put my magic to rest for a couple hundred, but it’s always there, growing and adapting. You forget the dark years I spent learning everything I could. Bending morals to gain access to things even you shudder before. You forget the crimes I committed under your watch. Horrendous actions you should have prevented, had you not been lazy and complacent.” He flicks one slender finger, and the house around them burst in a cloud of blue butterflies, every article of clothing, every loose page, and every slightly moldy piece of produce in a stupid fridge almost seventy years past its prime. Arthur flicks his eyes at the glow, and shrugs. “Simple party tricks.”

           Merlin rolls his neck, and as it cracks, the butterflies vanish in clouds of smoke that settle onto the ground and spring into flowers taller than the trees around them, thorns thicker than Arthur’s waist. He brushes his nose, and the flowers turn into great metal bars that bend and twist over them forming a living cage in gleaming bronze colors, constantly moving and creaking above them. Arthur has the decency to look mildly pale, but he simply reaches out a hand and brushes his fingers across the swaying beams.

           “Wouldn’t do that, sire.” Merlin’s fingers flutter against his legs. The surface of the beams begins to flow and Arthur draws his hand away, watching in horror as the flesh bubbles and contorts, black streaks snaking up his arms and curling around his throat. Guilt flickers briefly in his gut as Merlin watches the ink peel off Arthur’s neck and slip down his throat in a semi-solid smoke.

           “Can feel it, can’t you? It’s like your choking, but there’s air moving in and out of your throat. Feels like you’re burning alive, inside and out, but your skin is probably better off than it’s ever been.” He jerks his chin, and the smoky substance turns silky. He flutters his fingers and it becomes smoke again. Merlin lifts a hand removing the metal bars, and Arthur feels an awful tugging somewhere between his groin and his stomach, and he realizes that the hills around them are rolling like sections of a conveyor belt. They begin to move until Arthur can make out bits of the town that shouldn’t be visible, until he can hear the roar of an ocean that’s impossibly far away.

           There are people standing on cobblestone streets, waddling on paved streets that are bouncing like rubber, watching as the ocean races towards them, unconcerned like this is an everyday concern. Arthur raises a hand towards the waves, as they blanket the section he knows houses his own meager flat, and his favorite bistro. He drops it when he realizes he can do nothing. That whatever ancient force lives inside of him is suddenly afraid and powerless.

           In a blink, the ocean is gone, the town is gone, even the hills are gone. Arthur is disoriented, unsure of where they are, only that the land is flat and red and dry, and the heat is causing his sweater to stick to his skin, and he can feel the sun scorching his cheeks. He thinks he sees the swirling signs of a hotel, but there’s so much noise, so many coins sinking into slots, he can’t focus. He puts his hands to his ears before he realizes that while the noise might be coming from the town, it is also echoing separately in his head.

           Merlin flicks a wrist, and they’re back on the grassy patch of land surrounded by mountains and trees. The shabby shack Merlin calls home is standing there, same as ever if not slightly newer looking. Merlin stalks closer, looks into Arthur’s eyes, looks beyond Arthur’s eyes. “I can bend this world and tear it apart. Your magic is old and stolen from the land, despite your claims. Mine truly  _ is  _ the land.”

           Both of them face each other, chest heaving. Merlin begins to worry they’ll stand there forever, that they’ll turn to dust or stone, become a part of the land before either of them thinks to cave in, but he cannot do it again. He refuses to lose Arthur once more. “You need me. You’ve refused to let me die, but I will. I will wipe myself from existence. I will destroy myself, every single atom, as if I’ve never existed. And where will you and all of your plans be then?”

           Arthur frowns and puts a hand to his head. He blinks, looks dazed for a moment, before his face is stony again. “You are not infinite, Emrys.”

           Merlin shakes his head. “No, but I’ve a lot of time left. I can feel it. I’ve not lived half my life, have I?”

           Arthur glances at the sky, then back at Merlin. “Perhaps.”

           Merlin knows then, that it’s true. “Give him back.”

           Arthur grins. “I am very much mortal. My life may have been cut short, but I still only had decades left in me.”

           Merlin shakes his head. “You were mortal. Now, I don’t know what you are, but you are something new. You feel it, the way I feel it. Our lives are so intertwined, that you can feel the end of yours, same as you feel mine, as I feel mine.”

Fury blankets Arthur’s face, but Merlin knows he’s won. The voices echoes again. “You will pay for this, Emrys.”

           Merlin smiles. “We both know I already have.”

           Around them, the world seems to explode, darkness that’s blinding the way light is, sucks the sound from around them. Merlin feels as though he is being simultaneously split apart and stitched together, and he wonders if maybe his threats to diminish his existence on a cellular level might have inspire a new form of death.

\---

           What feels like centuries later, Merlin breaths in deeply, choking on fresh, chilly air. He blinks a few times, glancing around, and figures whatever happened must have only been seconds. He can’t see Arthur, nor can he feel him. It worries him, that he pushed those ancient forces too far, too hard, too fast. Then he feels it, that strange little fluttering blip in his chest. It’s close; closer than it has ever been. He steps forward, ready to find Arthur, when he has to pause and hold a hand to his head. Something’s wrong, he thinks. He already knows where Arthur is, and he shouldn’t, but there are memories in his head that weren’t there previously. While he remembers fighting with Arthur, remembers him in a trench, and in Berlin before it was Berlin and near cold water next to acres of grapes, they don’t feel quite like memories. More like dreams he’s spun to keep himself warm.

           hurts, because he suddenly remembers first meeting Arthur in a coffee shop, and night’s spent pouring over business text books, and pie on noses, and Arthur weeping for all of those in Camelot. He remembers the way the pain was fresh for Arthur, like he’d lost them all in one stroke only the day before. These are not his memories, though. They are, because he has them, but he knows they’ve been created. Merlin doesn’t know how he feels about that.

           He wants to know what Arthur remembers, but he’s terrified of the possibilities. Doesn’t want to think of Arthur’s response to Merlin’s threats, to Merlin’s violence.

           He drags himself towards the road and begins the trek into town, worry tripping him a few times. When he finally gets there, he absently heads towards the bookstore that doubles, oddly, as both an Italian joint and a fabric store. He pauses by a row of poetry, glancing just for a moment at the names, before he finds a corner table near the back of the Italian joint. Arthur is waiting, several spreadsheets on one half the table and a plate of pasta on the other. Merlin goes to lean down and plant a kiss to blond hair, but he pulls back at the last second. Arthur glances up, noticing, and quirks a brow. Merlin can’t help himself as he brushes a stray lock of hair out of blue eyes, but he frowns, because the gesture is equal parts familiar and foreign.

Arthur’s grin slowly fades, and he brushes his fingers across Merlin’s scrunching his nose. “Always so cold, Merlin.” He goes to kiss Merlin’s fingers, and it’s an accident, but he frowns harder when Merlin flinches away.

Merlin offers an apologetic smile, and slumps in the seat across from him, desperate for space. “Sorry.”

Arthur glowers. “Really? That’s all the explanation I’m gonna get?”

Merlin presses two fingers to his left brow and closes his eyes. “A bit…” He’s disoriented. Not necessarily confused, but maybe a little flustered. “Heads gone a little wonky.”

Arthur nods slowly before stowing the spreadsheets away. “Had a late lunch, so I figured I’d just steal a couple of bites of yours. Hope you don’t mind. I know we said meals together were important, but I figure it still counts if one of us is eating.”

Merlin can’t respond because memories are pouring into his skull, conversations about Arthur’s modern life. The strangeness of growing up with a mother and a father and a dog. Football teams and boy scouts. Nights spent wrapped around each other, and mornings spent bare assed sipping bitter coffee in an unpacked house. They’re crowding out the old memories, but not erasing them. His head is spinning and he really thinks that despite previous events this is what is going to forces him to vomit.

Arthur is suddenly on his knees in front of Merlin, cupping his face in his hands and stroking his thumbs,  _ uncallused _ Merlin notes, across Merlin’s cheek bones. “C’mon love. What’s wrong?”

Merlin looks up. “What do you remember? Of before, I mean?”

Arthur looks confused and a little peevish. “We’ve had that conversation Mate. I remember all of Camelot, minus the bits I shouldn’t.” His hands shift around to grab Merlin around the neck, and it makes him spiral for a moment, remembering spotted vision and burning lungs, and Arthur must see the panic in his eyes, because he immediately removes his hands and replaces them on Merlin’s wrist, stroking over the pulse points. “It’s those nightmares again, yeah?”

Merlin stares at him, perplexed, temporarily losing himself in the blue before he catches what Arthur said. “Nightmares?” Arthur nods, eyes intense and Merlin wonders if they aren’t back in Camelot ready to march into battle.

Arthur doesn’t stop stroking his thumbs on Merlin’s wrist. “It’s okay, Merlin. I’m really here this time.” One hand pauses and gently taps Merlin’s temple. “Grief’s funny, but you didn’t dream me up or lose yourself to heroin or whatever else caused them.”

Merlin wants to laugh. And so he does, great belly bouncing sounds that have tears leaking and Arthur leaning away like he’s lost his mind. Maybe he has, because if this is his punishment for daring to defy, than he can live with it. He pulls Arthur up and kisses him soundly, a terrible mashing of teeth, one great slobbery mess but he can’t help his exuberance. Arthur is here and he’s real, and maybe Merlin’s off his rockers with memories that should and shouldn’t exist taking up brain space, but damned if he doesn’t love Arthur.

Arthur, for his part, takes it in stride, lets Merlin kiss him, then finds his seat again and feeds Merlin bites of a simple spaghetti and meat sauce dinner. He never lets go of his hand, and for a long while there’s a slight edge of worry to his focus, but he relaxes, brushes it off as just one of those strange moments Merlin suffers. When they leave, Arthur refuses to let go of Merlin’s hand, despite, as he says, their Popsicle state.

           That night, they end up settle on an ugly mauve-purple-brown couch sipping slightly bitter grape juice from a stainless steel fridge. Arthur manages to fuss over every inch of Merlin, fingers dancing up and down his spine, lips curling over his ears, tongue tracing his lips and his nose, and Merlin can't help but wonder if some tiny, locked away part of Arthur knows about the broken skin he put there before. He shoves the thought away, content to count the graying hair in Arthur's bear, and trace the laugh lines around his eyes until Arthur claims they’re both too old to sleep on a couch and drags Merlin to bed.

  
  



End file.
